Travelers flying to the United States will need proof of a Covid vaccination by 2023 – making the US the only country in the Western world to persist with the failed policy.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has extended the rule, which applies only to non-US citizens, until January 8 at least next year to ‘limit the risk of Covid-19, including variants of the virus’.
But there is growing acceptance among experts that Covid vaccines – while highly effective at preventing severe disease – do not stop the infection very well.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), admitted earlier this year that people who get shots ‘can no longer prevent transmission.’
As of November 2021, non-US citizens entering the US must provide proof of a Covid vaccination.
The CDC defines complete immunization as an acceptable single-dose vaccine or both doses in an acceptable two-dose series at least two weeks prior. No reinforcement is required.
Most Western countries such as England, France and Germany rejected these proposals.
Countries that still require a Covid vaccine to enter are: China, Angola, Libya, Ghana, Cameroon, Liberia, Yemen, Indonesia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
TSA’s announcement said it was revising the policy to ‘limit the risk that COVID-19… could enter, transmit, and spread across the United States.’
As shown in the graph above, the introduction of vaccination verification for travelers on November 8, 2021 did not stop last year’s winter season of Covid cases from a micron difference.
The US Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines for treating unvaccinated and unvaccinated people, but travelers should check their covid shot status to ‘reduce the spread of covid-19’. the same
The TSA’s renewed policy runs through Jan. 8 of next year and may be extended beyond that.
The document states: ‘Along with the President’s executive order and the CDC’s order, these policies are intended to limit the threat of COVID-19, including strains of the virus, to the United States, which may increase the health care and public health resources of the United States, endanger the health and safety of the American public. It threatens the security of our civil aviation system.’
This contradicts the CDC’s own. InstructionPublished in August, which no longer differentiates between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
Estimates suggest that covid vaccines prevent 30 to 40 percent of infections in the three to six months after vaccination. But this goes down to almost zero.
But the bullets Reduce Up to 90 percent risk of serious illness or death in the months after vaccination.
“Our vaccines work exceptionally well,” Dr. Walensky summarized in January of this year.
They continue to perform well for Delta in terms of morbidity and mortality. They defend… what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.’
As Covid has changed, the shots have become less effective at preventing transmission.
The updated bivalent vaccines were supposed to strengthen protection against Omicron and the globally dominant strains.
But as reported by DailyMail.com this week, there are doubts whether the vaccines actually work better than they originally did.
The Biden administration and the CDC in June dropped the requirement for international travelers to the U.S. to present a negative covid test, but did not address the need for covid vaccines.
This means that vaccinated people can fly even if they are confirmed to have the virus.
More than 80 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the Covid shot, and 69 percent have been vaccinated twice.
But uptake of booster shots has been slow, with only 26.3 million receiving the booster shots.
Dr. William Schaffner, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told DailyMail.com that the extended policy was a ‘mystery’.
There are several reasons why travelers to the U.S. must continue to show their Covid vaccination status are puzzling.
First, Covid is very common and spreading in the US, so we are not expecting an infection from our population without it here. Second, the vaccines are only moderately effective in preventing transmission. Indeed, vaccinated people can become infected and pass the virus on to others.’
He added: “Finally, as with any highly contagious respiratory virus, it has become clear that travel restrictions are not very effective at keeping new viruses out of the country – and Covid is no longer new.”